15 Minutes of Shame
by Spawn Guy
Summary: Peter's not the only one with something to hide here.
1. Night1:Robbie

All characters belong to the Lord God Greg Weisman, or as he is sometimes known Sony and Marvel.

No profit beyond love itself is made form this.

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"15 minutes? 15 minutes!? What kind of hospital is this?! Who do you think you're talking too!? In my day, you paid that amount, you got a hell of a lot more than 15 minutes!"

Robbie tries and subsequently fails to hold back a smile. The upside to knowing J. Jonah Jameson is you realise yelling is his way of letting you, your neighbour and about most of New York state that he's okay.

But then, Robbie was always good at reading people. His mentor at ESU told him it was why he'd make, at least, a passing journalist. It's why Jonah always trusted him. He understands how it works.

You read people, then you write their story, their real story if you're sharp enough.

He's okay because John's okay. Sort of. Ravencroft is calling to let Jonah know that John's response to sedatives has left Dr. Kafka optimistic about his chances with unmediated therapy, and if this holds up Jonah will be able to see his son (for fifteen fershluggener minutes) within a week. About a month sooner than Dr. Connors predicted.

Jonah's negotiated something by now, slamming the phone down.

"Finally! Where was I? Oh yeah, just in case. Good mock up. Fantastic mock up. Spectacular mock up! Save it for wherever the story goes, save a couple of bucks. Check in with Li before we lock up, if he left anything in here then he probably didn't deserve to own it anyway! Wait up for me while I check on the printers for tomorrow's edition, we'll split the fare."

"There a reason you haven't called your wife tonight?" Robbie asks. Despite the fact he hasn't taken time out to do that either.

The downside to knowing J. Jonah Jameson. When he falls silent like this…

"Think I'll get on that."

Going home to tell your wife that her son's in an asylum. Among other things.

Robbie watches one of his oldest friends in this city move across the room to fetch his coat with all the slow inevitability of the Hindenburg on the way to the ground. Yesterday John Jameson became the 12th person in a growing list of New Yorkers to develop superpowers and the 3rd of these to be committed to the Ravencroft Institute. Just a little on that evening's way to yesterday something calling itself Venom burst into Johan's office and declared that Peter Parker was Spider-Man.

If Peter is Spider-Man…if he _did_ have something to do with what happened to John…

Robbie Robertson is a reporter. He reads people, then he writes their story. He tells their truth.

He just never said he had to like it.


	2. Day 1:Harry

Harry doesn't know why he keeps doing this. Sneaking up to Dad's study door and everything. He just does.

Probably comes with being…not neglected. People don't acknowledge when you screw up if they're neglecting you. They don't acknowledge you period. But sometimes it's just nice to hear Dad talking with someone over the phone, even if it's to someone else.

It's gotten a little worse after the Green because there's long periods of time where it doesn't sound like Dad's doing anything in there. Like he's not in the building. Not even in the same universe. Listening outside his study doesn't make Harry feel better but it's something.

What he hears waiting for a ride to school that cold January morning smashes a freezing weight all through his body and sends him hurtling through the floor and down into the darkness of the centre of the Earth. The limo can't get him to M3 fast enough.

"Pete! A Bugle reporter asked my dad if you're Spider-Man! C'mon, what's _that _about?"

"N-nothing!"

Harry plays it cool through Pete's spastic locker slamming and Flash's train wreck of a come on to some girl he sort of recognises from bio. It's pretty easy when it feels like there's an iceberg squatting in your gut.

He had to ask.

Because it was entirely possible he may have tried to kill his best friend last Halloween and he doesn't know why that's not freaking him out.


	3. Day 1:Liz

Liz Allen kind of hates Harry Osborn right now.

In a pre-Mustang tryouts world she didn't really give him much thought. Rich kid's who don't act like rich kid's don't hold your attention for too long. And when something tells you they kind of _want_ your attention…

To be more accurate, what she probably hates is that she knows to find Peter all she has to do is call Gwen Stacy.

She really hates not knowing how to feel when she comes through the doors of the Silver Spoon alone. And smiling.

"Hey babe." Harry says. Like Flash, but on auto pilot. She's really starting to dislike him. And Stacy has to put up with him for how long? No reason she can't at least try being nice to her then, if that's the way it is, right?

She hates being nice.

"What's got you so happy."

"It's…kind of stupid actually."

She's trying not to laugh. Is that good or bad?

"Well don't keep us in suspense babe. Spill."

Liz smiles politely as the girl stumbles her way through whatever the hell is going wrong out there with the world. When Stacy's finished the only thing she's been certain of is that she really _shouldn't_ but does anyway. It's unavoidable. Come on.

"You're serious? Petey…Spider-Man?"

People are looking at her because of how hard she's laughing, not how loud she said that, right? Gwen's smiling, half infected, half embarrassed and she has no idea what Harry's face is doing right now.

"Yeah. Pretty spectacular, huh?"

"Pretty insane!" Harry chimes in. "Some guy from the Bugle showed up and asked my dad the same thing. It's just a joke. Probably some guy who doesn't like the Bugle. Maybe doesn't like Pete." He genuinely looks at her for the first time since they started having the conversation. It kind of creeps her out. "You got any idea what Flash is doing right now?"

"No." she says honestly, trying not to think about that night at Coney island.

The break up hurt like hell, yeah, but that's not why she really doesn't want to spend too much time thinking about what it. Because she wasn't the only one Spider-Man saved that night.

Liz Allen really hates not knowing if it's better that Peter has an actual reason for messing up their relationship or if this would be happening all on it's own.

She'd hate to think what would happen if Peter Parker really is Spider-Man, and she still isn't the girl he wants to be with.


	4. Night 2:Hammerhead

"_**WhOoPs. ToO hArD. BuT sTaY tUnEd! We'Ll Be RiGhT bAcK wItH tHe UnMaSkInG!"**_

"A worthwhile investment it seems."

Days like this are when Hammerhead _really _doesn't like being face to face with the boss like this. Because it's almost impossible to read Tombstone's face any day of the week. The Big Man hasn't moved a muscle since he first looked at the screen.

He didn't even blink when Hammerhead brought in the laptop. Didn't mention he apparently had this Venom thing on the pay roll either.

Ock and his freak show were bad enough, but this guy…if it is a guy in there. And the boss just signed him up to take the webhead out, no questions? And it's going after some frat boy while trying to squash the bug? What the hell?

And how much is this thing gonna cost, huh?

"I want everything there is on this Peter Parker."

Hammerhead knows where this is going; manpower pulled away from top ops for 24 hours staking out some dump with no sign of nothing and the price going up faster than a cab meter. Wasting time on a kid instead of wasting a superhero all because of the word of some mutant playing super villain. Six of which didn't go through with what the Big Man built them for either, Hammerhead can't help but notice. The Master Planner and his crew each cost more to put together, set up or bust out of Rikers than this waste of space stakeout Tombstone is about to put together. And if they're pulling stunts like that screw up with Homeland Security, they don't have an ounce of actual respect for what the Big Man is.

If he says what Hammerhead knows he he's gonna say, neither does the Big Man.

"An address, then some recon. A light touch if any of course. No need to out our people in the Bugle if we don't have to, so don't bother. And anything you can find on our friend in black if this pans out. Or doesn't."

At least he didn't ask for Gargan.

Hammerhead doesn't say anything as he closes the laptop and pads out of the room, foot steps careful, grip tight around the laptop. Venom and this Parker kid are raising all sorts of questions. A good right hand man don't ask questions. Shouldn't have to.


	5. Night 2:Mark

Mark Allen was born a gambler's son. Or so he figures, given how may risks papa's taken over the years, which is why he has this nice room to sit and stare at the wall in. Or listen to the news about his sister's boyfriend in. Maybe it's because he never really felt like he'd earned that room that got him into it.

Papa nearly beat eight different kinds of hell out of him when he found out about his problem (and a ninth for good measure. All without using his fists. Slick) but what really got him to quit wasn't the old man's yelling and disappointed looks. It was that far away, hurt look in his sister's eyes.

Actually, that's what got him to go to those borderline homo hand holding sessions in juvie. Mark still doesn't see how he has what you'd actually call a problem. He just got to caught up in the rush, that was all. Like it never happened to you.

The rush isn't when you win or anything like what they'll tell you (They being other gamblers he'd guess, but he never talked to any before juvie). It's not that moment where you win that makes you keep going back for more until you've got nothing and don't even own your own molecular structure.

It's that moment when you've got a lock, just before you play a winning hand or your guy scores the knock out punch. It's that split second where you're the only guy in the universe, this white hot light waiting to come bursting out the other end of the tunnel, winning. The problem is the universe sometimes doesn't understand this and you end up having to do something stupid like stealing a car to secure the next lock. And then you go to juvie where a lot of people with smiles that belong in an old lady's parlour try and talk you out of the rush. Where they may as well talk you out of living.

But he couldn't stand it when Liz got that look in her eye, so he took it all in and resolved to find something else. Which is maybe where Mary Jane Watson comes in. But he'll never forget that look, or the burning knowledge that he's the reason it ever

existed.

He'll be damned if she ever has to look at anyone else like that again.

He hates that look in Liz's eyes. Hates it worse when she tries to hide it, which she's been doing since Flash Thompson's birthday party.

If this Parker kid is Spider-Man…well.

They told him he'd never get over his problem. They'd probably tell him not to even try getting in the middle of whatever the hell the little punk thinks he's doing and actually _is_ doing to his sister. And even then, he's supposed to be a superhero or something. You shouldn't try your luck against a superhero. The ante's too high.

Wanna bet?


	6. Night 2:The Enforcers

The Enforcers don't usually discuss business so openly in their bolt hole in the Big Sky. But they've been cooped up in training gyms and fancy secret hotel rooms ever since the Sinister Six disaster, and this is big news. Huge. So sue 'em.

"Can't be. I've gone enough rounds with the bug to know he acts like a punk. But he ain't no punk."

"Yeah." Fancy Dan says.

"Mmm" goes Ox.

"Now I reckon the bug's got something goin' on there. Maybe even what the rest of them armatures had done to 'em. But tell me this; what kinda kid'd be dumb enough to have that done to 'em?"

"Yeah…" Fancy Dan says distractedly, trying to work something out here.

Ox doesn't say anything. He wasn't listening. Dan's about to, but Montana downs whatever's in his glass and picks right back up.

"Be a hell of a world if every kid woke up jumpin' around like--," He looses his stride here, having to slog through his brain and whatever it was he just drank to come up with an appropriate analogy, then manages to swagger ashore.", like a spring-loaded cat on a flaming oil rig floor."

He frowns uncertainly about that one, pretending it's at the concept at a world full of super children and pressing on with his train of thought. It'd help if he had a map. Or a break.

"An' even if they did, they ain't gonna call attention to themselves. Not by wearing a costume anyway." He holds back a belch. It's vitally important he doesn't loose track of this part. "The bug's got more of an attention seekin' complex than a masacist in a metal shop, but he's smart enough to wear a mask. Yer average kid wouldn't do that, not on the East coast anyhow. They'd have their face all over everythin', cashin' in 'stead of makin' an honest day's livin'."

Dan smiles dry and satisfied, the kind of smile his face was manufactured for. His thoughts almost exactly. "Yeah."

Blackie Gaxton catches Ox's eye and starts filling glasses. Only the best for the boss. And the Mexican mountain ranges that come with him.

"Mmm." Ox rumbles appreciatively. He takes a swig, savouring the burn and the aroma of those little nuts you only get in New York. When he puts it down two glasses are missing and Dan hasn't even reached for one yet. Montana briefly forgets himself and wipes his mouth on his gold cufflinks.

"It's like them other armatures." He pauses for breath. It may be Fancy Dan's imagination (he's been accused of having worse things) but something in the vibrating mess that is Montana's face seems to be going red. "Why would a fella go and do that to himself? I mean…why? An' it ain't just punks like Rhinosand or Rhinoman or whatever they called em. 'S…'s doctors. Not _real_ doctors, but smart people. Old people!"

He chokes down a belch. Gotta get this out.

"An' these people, these smart people, they get their fancy mojo an' fruity suits an' they run around actin' like they're a bunch of kids! That's what all this stuff does! Turns men into kids. Messes with yer head. The engine's runnin' but ain't nobody driving."

Actually scratch that, better get something down. He grabs another drink to try and gather his thoughts.

"My point, partners is ya can't get a kid to act even more like a kid, yeah? So maybe the bug's a dwarf with a little too much of the gift fer the gab, sure, but he ain't no kid. Can't be! Ain't outta be allowed. 'Cause kids just ain't got the stuff. They just ain't. Nah, ya need somethin'….somethin'…hard drivin' ya."

Wherever his train of thought was going, it's jumped the rails and is now chugging away from him down an entirely separate track, but it's escape gives him an inspiration.

"An whatever it is…y'know for the doctors and the rhinos and things…you gotta get away from it, right? I mean, if yer messed up enough to pull on somethin' more fruity than an apple tree in a wheat field somethin' musta gone and messed ya up first, right? An' you gotta get away from it, whatever it is, cause it's driven' ya nuts. So, so since yer childhood's gotta be real terrible an' all, ya get yer freaky whatever it is and run around actin' like a little kid all over again. So's you can make it right, right? An' look at the bug, just look! Swings around actin' like the sun rises just to hear him crow! Kid's think like that, but they don't act like it, yeah?" He really wishes he had something to drink so he had most confidence in this. "I mean, we've seen some pretty weird stuff together right partners? Stuff no kids ever gonna see--no, _should _never see."

"Yeah." says Fancy Dan soberly.

"Mmm" agrees Ox.

"An' these ametures and punks and superguys an' the big…they gotta have somethin' messed up to run away from so's they can act like kids, yeah?" Or at least Montana thinks that's his point.

The alternative is the Enforcers, the best of the best from East to West, got their collective asses handed to them, one after the other, by someone who isn't even old enough to drive yet.

Fancy Dan and Ox hesitate. Dan's not gonna argue with the boss, but he never argues. That doesn't mean anything. You're lucky if Ox is monosyllabic.

"So the bug can't be a kid," Montana concludes ",he's too messed up. 'S-'sall logical like when ya'll think about it…"

He attempts to tap the side of his head to demonstrate and almost puts out his eye.

They think about this, even Ox. Yeah. Right. Yeah. This Peter Whateverhisnameis guy'd have to be downright messed up to actually be something like the bug. Hell, from the sounds of it, you'd have to be pretty dumb to be a superhero or a super villain. More messed up than a kid's closet when daddy ain't come home yet. Ox and Fancy Dan, their pride intact, are put at ease. This please Montana.

Then, through the fatigue and the drink, he starts thinking sharp ice cold thoughts about what that makes the Shocker exactly.


	7. Night 2: PatchFoswell

Frederick Foswell taps his finger off the surface of the table a few booths behind the Enforcer's own, feigning interest in whatever's in his glass. The move comes from a thousand minutes of every weekend spent in a Columbia dorm room practicing at the typewriter. It's a nice piece of body language to mould into Patch. Makes him look preoccupied.

The world's changing. Two decades ago he'd have been using an actual typewriter for a start. He got into the digital age on the wrong foot, partly because he wasn't ready to adapt, mostly because Jameson flat out refused to. Until he found out spell-checker and email could shave time off proofreading and layout by a few seconds.

Foswell's not going to call it yellow journalism, because if he did he'd have had to walk out the Bugle's doors a long time ago on principle. Thank God for Joseph Robertson. But just because _someone_ at the Bugle is ready to roll with every change and stick to the fundamentals of what they're supposed to do for a living doesn't mean everyone else will.

Suddenly it's a young person's game. Suddenly something like Patch is vital to someone like Foswell's survival. Back in the day maybe money changed hands now and then but you never had to change your face.

First rule of the many you'll hear learning journalism and still best enough to _be_ the first: write the story, don't be the story. If a young buck like Li can pull off inane sensationalism for every deadline then someone working their tail off as hard as Fredrick Foswell doesn't really have an excuse. And that's why while Patch has given him a hell of an edge by getting him into places like the Big Sky he's had to be careful he remains an observer and never an instigator. Sometimes it feels like he really is becoming Patch, whoever that is, and it worries him that one day not even a source like that will be enough to get him a story, to keep him ahead of Li and the others, and that he might do _something _to get one. Something very stupid.

He may have found a way around that though. The world's changing. Something beyond computers and typewriters and possibly everything human is scuttling out of the shadows.

This…this is interesting. The Spider-Man is interesting. And even if every so called super villain in the big apple didn't suddenly have something to prove by getting bigger, harder, so there's no way in hell a _kid _could beat them down like that, Patch has heard rumblings that Foswell's old Pulitzer winner Silvio Manfredi is about a month away from walking out of Ryker's and having words with whoever's waiting for him. Like the Big Man and the Master Planner. Or Electro. Or Sandman. Or Doc Ock.

All of who show up a lot, alongside Spider-Man, in the photos of one Peter Parker. Who may or may not be Spider-Man, but regardless has managed to nab more pics of the wall crawler than half the pros Foswell's known in almost a decade. And the more Patch hears the more it sounds like Foswell, whether or not he is Spider-Man, might be doing himself a real big favour endearing himself to this young man who, even if he isn't saving the world, is really damn good at taking pictures of someone who can. Pictures which would be just what some of Foswell's stuff could use to endear his writing to young and old alike.

It is a young person's game after all. Maybe that's not such a bad thing, if you know what you're doing.

Let the world change on it's own. The less someone like the Patches and Foswells of this world need to do to watch something blow up without actually blowing it up, the better. A little moral ambiguity keeps their consciences clearer like that.


	8. Night 2:Calypso

"Sergei my love, come back to bed."

Her lover does not respond, and Calypso feels a stab of irritation she normally only feels around her sister as she gathers the sheets around herself and pads up behind him.

He is dressed in his hunting garb, the coarseness of his tunic picking at her skin as she encircles his waist with her arms, revelling in the golden feeling of his fur.

"He is out there, Calypso."

"The Parker child?"

A snarl.

"The Spider-Man. He mocks me with a hyenas' cry, leaving ridiculous trails such as this 'Peter Parker' for me to find, challenging me to follow and become entangled in his web."

She would point out that the possibility of the Spider-Man's identity seems to have been introduced to the media by this Venom creature (and there is something not-of-this-world about that one that greatly disturbs Calypso) but then he may consider going after _it _as well. And she won't get what she wants.

"The Master Planner's instructions were to wait until your associates in organized crime showed willingness to pay even further for your services. To not engage the Spider unless it were unavoidable."

A snort.

"Kraven does not take instructions."

She tries to tighten her hold. She doesn't want him to go, not before it's time for the final hunt. Not before he's ready. Not before she's ready.

"Sergei, it's cold. Close the windows and come back inside."

"It is nothing I have not faced in Mother Russia. I could find him in this. I know I could. It would take but a scent to…"

He tenses up, alert. She used to know what that meant, but now everything he does is so primal. Just like whatever lurked beneath the veneer of Russian nobility when she first met him, but a thousand fold. The creature his proud and overbearing parents raised within him. The thing that saw him torment his wretched stepbrother throughout their childhood. The beast that drove him to the hunt. The animal in the man that had him do that thing that makes her smile even if she did not mean to.

"Are you not the great hunter, Kraven my love?"

A warning growl.

"There is none greater. You of all people should know this. Do not try my patience, woman."

It's almost a purr. He doesn't resist as she leans closer, whispering in his pricked ears.

"The great hunter could not be defeated by a mere child."

He spins suddenly, grabbing her and she relishes the force of his speed and strength, the prick of his claws on her shoulders. Something in his eyes holds him back and she smiles at it. Bares her teeth anyway.

"The great hunter would never prowl the edges of this cage snarling at the fact he failed at a child's game…"

"Kraven does not play games!"

The art of the voodoo, among the many arts Calypso has learned over her long life, involves far more passion than one would think to associate with the dead. As with every art or religion, call it what you will, it has it's iconography, it's totems. Sergei is the Hunter and everything that comes with that, but he was so different from the hunters she'd encountered in her youth that she couldn't have stopped herself from being drawn to him if she'd been standing on the other side of the moon. He was familiar, comfortably so, but something in him was very different and she challenged him, tried to catch a glimpse of it as much as she could, and in doing so fell in love with him.

And she does love Sergei Kravenoff. Because even before the man of science invoked his totem, he was always Kraven the Hunter in some way.

The Spider-Man, Spider-Child, whichever he may be is at the centre of a vast web, a brand new Anansi. His web draws those around him into a brand new pantheon, so beautiful Calypso feels like she's staring into the sun without the pain. Creature of magic or science, man or child, the Spider has changed nature itself and brought Kraven her Hunter out of her beloved Sergei. She will be forever grateful to him for that. Even after she's destroyed him to help Kraven take his rightful place as head of this new pantheon.

And to do that she just has to keep challenging him. He will hunt the Spider again. Just not tonight, he's not ready. Which means his energies need to be…focused in a different direction. She almost has to bite down on her lip to prevent herself from smiling.

"Show me."

She is his. He is _hers._

He does that thing that makes her smile even if she does not mean to. She digs her hands into his raising hackles and means it.

The beast is hers and she's never letting go.


	9. Day 2:Sally

"There he is! Do you think he's really Spidey?"

"No I do not!"

Sally Avril knows how the world is supposed to work. Freaks like Spider-Man aren't supposed to exist. Neither are freaks like Peter Parker. Freaks like Spider-Man especially aren't meant to exist if they really are freaks like Peter Parker. And if the dweeb is Spider-Man that'd mean she said no. To a friggin' superhero. What do you think she is, stupid?

Still…

She catches up with Liz just before study hall.

"Hey girl!"

"Hey." Sally frowns when Liz doesn't look directly at her and, because it's always worked before, raises her voice.

"So! How ya been taking the news? Nobody been chasing you around trying to get you to think you-know-who is you know-what?"

She frowns slightly when even this doesn't quite work because Liz is frowning at the space between the wall and the floor, not her. Despite her natural concern Sally try's to convey it as best she can while keeping her face as limp as possible. At their age frowning is dangerous, especially at Liz's age. That's how age lines start.

"I…don't think they even know we're together. I haven't seen him all day. Not since Professor Warren's class."

Feeling like a complete retard Sally says "You think he, y'know, _could_ be?" Because she's seen what the Lois Lane is supposed to wear. Totally 40's. Uck. Poor Liz.

"I don't know." Liz says, and just stops like someone let all her air out. They've come to a halt in front of the Mustangs' trophy case. Sally surreptitiously tries to catch Liz's expression in the glass, is horrified at how the pressure of this crazy couple of days has totally deformed her friend's face, then realises she's looking at her own. Then is relived her makeup is still holding up.

It should also be noted here that the first time Sally Avril heard the word _surreptitiously_ she thought it was a kind of plastic surgery.

Seriously.

She decides to change tactics.

"How's that gorgeous brother of your's? Still emo? 'Cause it's been about a couple of weeks and forever since he got out and it's kinda killing that hansom brooding thing he'd have goin' on if he looked up from his chips and into a mirror an' got in the game."

She's not wrong. Mark Allen is one of those people who could have anything, anyone he wanted in or out of high school if he just woke up and thought about it. He belongs alongside her an' Rand an' Glory an' Kenny, maybe not Flash an' Liz if they were still making eye contact 'cause that'd kinda cramp their collective style, but the point is even if he turned out to be totally fruity an' hooked up with Hobbie Brown (the way he dresses never made ya even think about it?) he'd still belong Up There because that's where guys like him are supposed to go instead of going down to the Bronx or something after what he needed. Like, _needed_ needed. Which for him is gambling apparently. She's never quite forgiven him for that.

Because for every guy like Mark who let's the side down, later down the line there might be someone like Rand who ends up maybe not gambling but not being as great and wonderful as they're supposed to be, maybe even a total wife beater or something. Flash was QB 1 on the fastest track to prom king Sally had ever seen. One break up later and what the hell is he now?

Liz tugs on her scarf a little reflexively like she's gonna try and choke herself instead of answering.

"Uh…no. I mean, Mark knows who Petey is, they just haven't…actually…met."

"An' why not?" Sally can't help herself. Give her credit though, she keeps the gleeful edge of hoping something might go wrong out of her voice.

At least she's honest, you're thinking. No, not at least. Sally Avril doesn't lie. Ever. The only reason she kinda is right now is because Liz's known her long enough to know she's gingery scuttling up to this like a fiddler crab and be okay with it.

Sally Avril is perfectly hunky dory with the fact almost nobody likes her for being so honest, and that's because when someone like her is really honest with themselves there's only one kind of people that will ever need to actually like her: the In Crowd. It's stage one to How The World Is Supposed To Work. Make all the right connections, meet a guy, happily ever after, although with her business studies she'll be damned if she's gonna settle for a frigging picket fence. This is the 21st century people, they're called condos.

Liz gestures with her left hand on autopilot, tugs a little more on her scarf with her right, eyes far away.

"Petey and I are still sort of figuring this out and Mark just got out of juvie. We're all finding our feet here, so I kind of haven't gotten around to introducing them for real yet."

Sally smells bullshit.

She's worked as hard to get rid of any blemishes from her friend's records, like fraternizing with the nerd herd an' their kiddie habits, that could keep them from their own futures because it'd be really great to have them there to share her own with. She isn't looking for thanks here but she's put almost as much effort into making sure of this as she has to find the right guy.

And she's worked _very_ hard to find the right guy because she's perfectly aware that her particular brand of honesty doesn't carry over into the real world, which is getting weirder than M3 everyday. It'd be nice to have someone to share that world with. Somebody to keep her going and maybe someone she can help keep going back.

A superheroes gotta be able to do that, right? So if somebody like Peter Parker can be a superhero, does this mean all her crusading is ultimately pointless because he was going to have a better future than her anyway? Would his powers have given her anything Rand couldn't? Does that mean she made the wrong choice?

What's worse if what if she chose right and thinking like this makes it all go wrong?

What if she winds up looking over her shoulder everyday wondering about what she coulda had and not being happy with what she's got? Cause she does have something pretty wonderful right here and the only reason big stupid sweet wonderful supportive listening tolerating totally solid no matter what Randal Robinson puts up with all her honesty crap is because he knows that she knows it. If he turns out to be another Mark Allen, or catches her going after a Peter Parker, or worse, does that and winds up being another Mark anyway she doesn't know what she'll do.

And it's crap like this that's why she's gotta find out if Peter Freaking Puny Parker is Spider-Man.

She realises it's been almost forever since she opened her mouth. Don't want to do that for too long and get a Chap Stick habit.

"You gonna?"

Liz smiles the kind of smile that only human being's can make, because only human being's can smile when they're trying not to cry.

"Maybe not just not right now. He's been through a lot and it might just be a little much for him. 'Specially not with what's going on right now. What might be going on all the time."

Sally Avril looks deeply into the eyes of what she realises may be her only real and definitely best friend in this dump, and what she sees there blasts away all her uncertainty and builds titanium under the concrete of her world.

Peter Parker's no super hero.

What kind of super hero puts his girlfriend through that?


	10. Day 2:The Cat

Walter Hardy steers clear of Quinton Beck (if that really _is_ Quinton Beck) after the guards lead the reporter away. He hears rumblings along the prison grapevine like distant thunderclouds, mumblings that can only be potential revenge schemes.

One cigar swiped from the warden's private stash buys him some G.P time and he wastes the first five seconds of it praying to a god he never really believed in that the number he's dialling is still his little girl's current one.

"…_this better be good."_

"Hello, Kitten."

A pause. His grip tightens around the receiver.

"_Dad? Daddy?"_

"Yes…Felicia, look, where are you?"

"_Uh, right now?" _She's either blinking guiltily or sleepily and he feels a brief stab. Worry that his daughter doesn't seem to know where she is, guilt that he can feel the seconds cascading out of his hands here and he really needs to talk to her, and he hasn't even articulated the damn request yet. _"Union City."_

"California?" Don't sound too hopeful, old boy.

"_I wish. New Jersey. You know it's the only place in the States you can get a grapnel worth a damn." _

"Tell me about it." Stop smiling damn it, no time! "Felicia…"

"_Is this about your parole? Have they moved your cell again? Did one of the big dogs try and bust you out? Have they done anything to your parole?"_

"Felicia, honey, no…" Still smiling…

"_Do you want me to come get you?"_

"God no!"

"_Is that a challenge?" _

From concerned to teasing, just like that. Just like a cat. Damn it.

Felicia's problem is that she thinks being a thief means she's on a different planet. He remembers how that felt. And then he turned 54, and jumping rooftops became just that little bit more dangerous, didn't it?

The guard's glare is spreading a headache from the back of Walter's head all the way to the front. This has taken five minutes and he's got maybe another fifteen before the jackass has to get him out of here to avoid suspicion when he and the next guy change shifts. Which is about twenty minutes away.

"Listen Felicia, even pretending this wasn't being recorded and was a fool proof line…don't come into the city tonight, alright? Not for tonight. Not for a while."

"_And why not?"_

"Have you been watching the news?"

"_Not a lot. This is Jersey so it's mostly business and pawing around hotel rooms wishing I'd taken that job in Hawaii. I tell you Daddy, this is no way to treat the Bla--"_

She stops herself. Everything but his mouth is screaming. He takes a few trembling seconds to get control.

"I know you've got your style down pat honey, and I couldn't be more proud even though some people will tell me I shouldn't be. But as I'm sure you and everyone in and out of the business knows, there's a lot of guys with their own special touch out there right now and not all of them are into finesse as you are, sweetheart."

"_And if anyone wants to tango I'll dance circles around them. Dad, what's going on here?"_

What _is_ going on here?

Before Ben Parker's death none of this super heroes and villains stuff happened out in the streets just like that. Now you can't turn on a TV, radio or computer without hearing all about them.

We interrupt this already complicated world to bring you this breaking news bulletin: something out of a Hieronymus Bosch painting tried to rip the mask off Ben Parker's nephew, if that's who he is, on cable TV. And while this is all unfathomable to the little people, Walter Hardy knows exactly how this works. He thinks up a simple little equation every night and day since he arrived.

No Cat, no Spider.

Why's he calling his daughter? Because she's the Black Cat and while given half a decade there will be no one better (that's not an estimation. He knows his family) lock picking and gymnastics don't mean anything against people who can bring down buildings. Because even with Silvermane just a few months away from release, this Venom creature is twice as dangerous and he doesn't know what he'd do if this thing so much as bruised Felicia's nose. Because even if she isn't hurt, everything happening out there right now is because Walter Hardy pulled the trigger.

So he's taking it out on his own family because he clearly hasn't done enough to Ben Parker's.

"I'm not asking Felicia. Stay in Jersey city, or to Hawaii or anything, but find yourself somewhere, dig a hole and _stay_ there. Understand?"

Silence.

"Felicia…"

"_So much for proud."_

"We'll talk later, alright?"

"_Count on it." _The line goes dead.

Just like her mother. Her wonderful mother who could be so fragile and beautiful and then colder and harder than granite around diamonds. Sometimes at the same time. And people wonder why he's never called her.

The night Ben Parker died will never leave Walter Hardy as he replaces the receiver and begins the long trek back to his cell, but it was something to overcome, to redeem for, another kind of lock. His own. Inside he could deal with it. It internalized everything. He would do his time. Now he feels helpless as the world outside quietly goes insane.

No Cat, no Spider.

She may not come today, but his daughter will come for him. He's not sure things will get any safer by then, you could never tell even before the super villains and that Venom creature. He's a prisoner rapped behind foot thick walls, but he doesn't fell safe. The Spider is out there and even he's not safe.

If a superhero isn't safe, then nobody is.


	11. Day 2:Martha

"And what was that, precisely?"

Martha Connors looks up from her grant paperwork. It should be a relief, but it isn't. There are three terrifying things on this uglier than ESU grant politics and Miles Warren's face is one of them.

"What was what," she snaps, remembering to add ", Dr. Warren?"

Barely.

Yes, up goes that tangled and supercilious eyebrow.

"The young man who was talking to…Edward, was it? Edward Brock?"

"Yes."

To Martha Connors the world, including emotions, comes down to it's own individual math. It wasn't until her best friend studied the works of John B. Watson that she learned that this was called behaviourism, but even as a scientist she never saw this as anything definable. It's too primal.

Meaning even if she wasn't a fully grown adult, there'd be no one to tattle _this_ school bully out to.

"Hmm. Any relation to--"

"Yes."

Edward Brock Sr. was not a close friend but he was one, and his son deserves better than to go under Miles Warren's microscope. Some scientists forget that there's an art to observing how everything connects, and with people sometimes that means not looking at all.

The only thing Martha feels she ever really had in common with Edward was their acknowledgment of right and wrong. They were always aware of the shades, of course, but when things _are_ black and white _you_ need to be black and white. For Martha that meant if you couldn't trust someone then you just didn't, for Edward that meant watching the offending part with this…intensity.

She's not the best judge of character not matter what Curt says but as far as she can tell Eddie's managed to avoid that kind of thing. The matter with Peter Parker aside.

"Did he have an appointment?"

"Sorry?"

"The young man from the Bugle. Did he have an appointment scheduled before he took Mr Brock aside from his work? Where is Mr Brock right now, precisely?"

"No. And I don't know where Eddie is. Almost certainly lunch, it's around that kind of time."

Warren's back is to her, but she knows he's looking at her reflected through the glass of the spider cages. It's what she did when they first hired Eddie to make sure the poor boy didn't blow up the room.

"You'll forgive me Dr. Connors, but I was unaware this lab was so open to the public. High school field trips, unpaid internship, albeit from my brother's courses, access to the media authorized or otherwise…"

He leaves that in the air for a few seconds the same way you'd leave a box lid closed over a cat before lifting it up to see if the oxygen supply had run out or not. Martha counts down slightly and waits for the opportunity to cut him off, because people like Warren like having the last word.

"I was unaware that any of that was your concern."

Warren is staring at the super spider cages but she knows she nailed him.

"Empire State isn't a private organization, Dr. Warren. Beyond your own projects there's nothing of immediate concern we need to address, and considering our _junior _interns have us ahead of schedule enough to turn to more philanthropic concerns such as Max Dillon and John Jameson, I'd think a little PR would be a good thing."

Especially since the loss of a little black life form put a huge black mark on the lab's record.

"Everyone everywhere has their right to privacy, Dr. Connors."

Right. And you knew Ned Whatshisname was from the Bugle how, exactly?

She wants to slap his hand away and bash his head against the glass, screaming him away from her family's work.

Actually, that's a complete exaggeration.

She just really wants to put his head through that glass.

"Of course. I could use some right now as a matter of fact."

"Really?"

"Yes."

These grant requests aren't going to fill out themselves. They won't get rid of the loss of the life form, but that'll mean they won't be as dependant on snake's like this for funding. They should have let Oscorp take him.

"As I shall personally be conducting the annual inventory myself, I suppose that's not too much to ask."

"Thank you." Martha says, trying so rigidly to remain civil that the room temperature almost plummets.

It was meant to be a good thing, she thinks, as Warren disappears into whatever anaemia smelling shadow he waits in. He was meant to bring funding to the lab, not move in, not take over. Not whatever he's doing.

Because he's not actually taking over the lab like you'd think someone would take over a business, although he's certainly prepared to treat it like one. He glides everywhere, poking at things, flaws, oversights, budget overdrafts, all without actually touching on them. Acting like the difficulties in running the lab are black and white, easily fixed, but hiding in the shades, never flat out saying it. That's the kind of thing the board will get behind almost without realising it, because with triple the number of facilities and students than Columbia, and in the middle of a recession to boot, you need to keep things like handing out grants black and white. And it's still not so simple that she can stand up and say "You _cannot _do this." because it doesn't look like he's doing anything. The lab isn't a business, but he's got them thinking that it is without their realising.

But this is her family's lab, so Martha Connors fights back the only way she can: she gets her head down and does the paperwork that will keep all of them employed at this lab by reminding them how much money it's made in the past, and trying to explain how apparent nowhere protects like the medical application of a further developed gene cleanser would be worth it even if it wasn't as instantaneous and dynamic as Warren's human augmentation theories.

Despite his convictions that's not what Edward would do. He'd fight. _Really_ fight. And deep in her heart of hearts she knows that's how he'd loose. Just being a good person doesn't win you anything, being a good person prepared to take the harder road might win your race. She should be thinking of Eddie, instead she's thinking about Peter.

Peter Parker. Spider-Man. It does explain a lot. A _lot_.

It doesn't change anything either. Spider-Man may have stopped the Lizard, may have saved Curt, but Peter Parker still took those photographs. But although Curt's been a staunch subscriber to the Bugle for years Martha can't see how someone who'd risk their life not just to fight the Lizard, but to cure him could be the terrorist Mr Jameson claims he is.

Eddie's not his father, but he never really knew him either and that might be why he didn't accept Gwen's explanation about the Parker family situation at the time that's disturbingly identical to her own. She wonders how much of a moral influence May Parker really is if her nephew would compromise his own (if he ever had them in the first place) for her.

But the kind of nephew who might not be able to swing from buildings and hold back men like Adrian Tomes and poor, traumatized Otto Octavius (maybe even men like Miles Warren?) with one hand, with no prompting, must be someone special deep down. Someone who knows all about how hard it is to take that path. To keep things black and white.

If he can't, and maybe even if he can, maybe the only way it _would_ look to someone that young and desperate that the only way to help someone they'd loved would be to take pictures of the worst moment of someone else's life.

Regardless maybe people like Peter can do the right thing, Spider powers or not.

Then so can she.

Later…

"We're missing a vale of gene cleanser."


	12. Day 2:Mary Jane

"H-hey Mary Jane."

"Hey Seymour."

Mary Jane tries to dial down the charm (and oh, cruel fate, that little extra mile she'll go for you _is_ part of her charm) as she gives Seymour O'Reilly a dazzling smile.

"Uh…w-what're ya doing?"

"Just hanging around."

It's study hall. What's she going to do? Study?

Not that brains aren't more important than beauty. You just don't have to mess one up by taking the other so seriously. And, what, ya didn't think she'd know most of the Bard's work to heart by now? Oh, ye of little faith.

Still. She'd like to go over the scene with Hermia, Demetrius and Helena in relative peace. Relative. People make good background noise. She doesn't like it when it's too quiet, more because it reminds her of home than the things it's led her to do when Aunt Anna's is too quiet. Riding with Eddie Brock for example.

"So…uh, you heard about…y'know?"

But Seymour isn't Eddie, is he? He deserves better, yeah? Never let it be said Mary Jane Watson never gave anybody their due!

"You mean do I think Peter Parker is Spider-Man?"

People turn their heads to look at her even though she hasn't raised her voice, and she's actually a little impressed with those that don't look at her but do listen. She smiles, remembers she's smiling already, then decides What The Heck and does so even more.

"Do I think Peter Parker is adventurous, brave, hilarious and sweet?"

She dog ends her script page subconsciously, too into play to really work and just really enjoying this far too much. Seymour swallows as she makes eye contact, and she dials the smile down to encouraging.

"Yeah?"

"Nope."

Someone laughs mildly in the background. She thinks it's that guy from Captain Stacy's seminar but she will _not_ turn around. Not yet. Seymour has her full attention for the next couple of minutes, the lucky guy.

"Uh…why not?"

She really shouldn't, but…

"Well," MJ smirks, pushing her script to one side to lean in conspiratorially, a little over the top but she's in that kind of mood ",first of all adventurous? He's from Queens. Brave? He's from Queens." She pauses for the rims hot that's never going to come, ah well, and starts up again as the light dawns in Seymour's eyes. "I mean, have _you_ ever seen him around when there's trouble? And who's always there when danger rears it's ugly head? It ain't Flash Thompson, that's for sure."

Way too much.

"Don't get me wrong though, Peter's a great guy. But action is it's own reward. Living on the edge, fighting crime, rescuing damsels, cool costume with stuff coming out of your wrists? The world's gotta be fun for a guy like Spidey and that's a little too much fun for a guy like Pete. Plus funny does not equate with hilarious, natch?"

"Uh…"

"But give the kid his due," she smiles an entirely different, smaller kind of smile. ", never said he wasn't sweet."

She realises the mask is slipping a little, and dives back into it. "A guy like Spidey probably doesn't have time to help out his aunt, or hang with his girlfriend, not when the sky's the limit, yeah?"

That ought to do it. Seymour's nodding, grinning a little too much now that he's found the bandwagon and has gotten a running start.

"Guess someone like Spidey wouldn't really need to worry about losing his mask, huh?"

Something silently snaps open inside MJ. Nothing to loose. Like aunts. Or girlfriends. Or girls you should really be his girlfriend already.

She'd honestly never thought of it like that.

"No…no, guess he wouldn't--"

Then something punches Spider-Man through the building.


	13. Day 2:DeWolff

"Sarge? The road?"

Stan Carter grunts an apology, settles the car back into the right lane, all without a single change in expression. Jean DeWolff smirks to herself and goes back to watching the window displays of Midtown peal by.

"Sorry," Carter says, and a few years ago that would have made her jump. ", didn't get much sleep. My crazy neighbour was talking to himself again."

That's the sarge. Sometimes there's nothing, then everything comes out in one soliloquy that's as sudden as it is casual. It comes from Carter not having that many people to talk to. He'll say nothing, then try and include them out of obligation after they've started shifting him out of their personal universe. Jean knows how that feels because she realised two years ago that, apart from her parents, she didn't have that many people in her life left who weren't cops.

It's a lonely life, not that that ever bothered her. It's the other guys on the force she worries about. Show her the person who can live this kind of life and manage to fill it with people, she'll shake their hand.

Carter glances at the street signs.

"Whaddaya say we swing by…"

"Don't you dare."

"Aww c'mon. You know you want to. Just to see if the kid _is_…"

She elbows him in the shoulder (not too hard, he's behind the wheel after all) with practised instinct. They've had this conversation since last August. That being when Spider-Man first started showing up and leaving guys hanging upside down outside liquor stores.

"Sarge, if the kid _is_ the Spider, God help him."

"'Cause as we all know, a little appreciation from the civvies for doing your job is just so awful."

It used to bother Jean whenever he'd get that edge to the voice. Stan doesn't say much, and sometimes when he talks about the guys they bring in there's…something there that doesn't…she doesn't know. And it used to bother her until they'd settled around each other enough that she didn't jump whenever he actually said something to another human being. In fact the vigilante is one of the few things Stan actually seems to _want_ to talk about and that's weird for a cop, a good one at that. Than there's Detective come Captain George Stacy and vigilantes and Captains who are way past due for promotion do not belong in the same sentence.

"And their hasn't been a single crime on the entire city since he showed up." she says dryly.

"Hey, city hall wouldn't go through with the budget for a super S.W.A.T team. Guys like the Enforcers were walking in and out of the state no matter what we did, and even if the Big man exists or his guys are sure living it up like he does. Come on DeWolff, all the freaks out there _before _the Sinister Six showed up. What'd you do?"

She thinks about it. She isn't sure how to feel about how the Spider is one of the few super humans she's had _time_ to think about and how she's never felt happy with the answer she's about to give.

"Honestly? Kid or not I'd run him in. For his own good if not the city's."

The pause is longer than even she's grown comfortable with, but Carter's smiling when he does reply. A little fixed, but it's one of the better endings to this kind of conversation than they've had before.

"You're just jealous because he makes the tights look good."

"And you're just prissy because I'd make it look better than you."

"Low, DeWolff. Just low."

She returns his smile with her reflection as she glances out the window, checking the back alleys resting between buildings. As much as she hates to admit it, mugging, carjacking, even drugs if you can believe it…it is down. It's all down.

So. Does she hate Spider-Man because he's doing her job or because he's doing it better? And what does she do if he is Peter Parker?

Because like it or not, and she does, she's a cop.

It's three hours later after a trip to virtually the other side of Midtown before dispatch sounds in. Confirmed 616 in progress. A 616 is the tag for mutant or supervillian activity, and dispatch says it's happening in the middle of Manhattan Midtown Magnet High.

A _high school_.

DeWolff relaxes, resting back into the security of her chair and gripping onto the dashboard with practised instinct as Carter swears, simultaneously swerving the unit around and hitting the sirens. Inside she's as tense as a steel bar. Even if he's hiding behind a desk somewhere she prays this Parker kid isn't the Spider.

No kid should live a life this empty and dangerous as this and have to be in the middle of it even if he doesn't.


	14. Day 2:Aaron Warren

Aaron Warren never quite had his brother's brains, but he was proud of what he had. Everyone's heard of someone attached to Midtown, and Advanced Biology is always rewarding in it's own right when the lower years show such potential to the likes of Empire State.

He may have perused the headlines less enthusiastically than many of his peers without much guilt, but that's really where he'd have expected the shock come from, not television news speculation. Maybe he's old fashioned like that, but he'd like to think he's up to date and enlightened enough to treat the possibility that one of his brightest students is a superhero as judiciously as you could treat…well…the possibility that one of your brightest students is a superhero. In all honesty Aaron has no idea what to make of it. He doesn't feature enough in Peter Parker's life outside this classroom to have whatever kind of inside you'd need for…this kind of thing.

What _is_ this kind of thing anyway? A media circus, obviously, but nonetheless. He probably wouldn't have taken it so hard if it hadn't come from the television. He never liked the television. He's a quiet man by nature, almost non-existent as Miles joked once because boys will be boys and boys can be cruel. Ironically he may have become a scientist because he didn't like things like the television. So much noise and light, so much speculation rather than actual discovery. He prefers things factual, concise, defined and limited. Natural.

The thing he is looking at does not belong to the natural world, and for one horrible second Aaron hates Spider-Man, Peter Parker or not, for bringing it here.

"_**WeLl, WeLl. AlL oUr FaVoUrItE pLaYtHiNgS aRe HeRe…"**_

The world goes red and blue for a second. The monster, blinded, staggers backwards scrabbling with inhuman movements.

"One word: evacuate!"

The thing roars, the vibrations shaking Aaron's already trembling knees. Part of him wonders why the building isn't coming down around them right now. The rest is too busy moving.

"Move along girls!" This is his classroom, damn it. How _dare_ this thing come here, threaten his pupils. Seeing this outsider, this hero (this student?) challenge it for what has to be moral instincts rather than mere dilutes the natural terror of the unnatural thing and gets Aaron thinking again. The hero can do his duty and handle the monster, the teacher can do his and get his charges to whatever counts for safety in new York City these days, and that starts with getting them out of the room.

Gwen Stacy hasn't moved.

"Now Miss Stacy!"

It's not harsh, it's not instinct, but it's something else Aaron realises he's running on that's just as primal. He simply knows he has to get the girl's out of here and that is what he's going to do. It's natural.

Maybe he really does have something to be proud of.

He get's a last glimpse of red and blue and black as he hustles them all out into the corridor. He'd like to think that if the young man under that mask is Peter Parker, then something he did as his teacher contributed to whatever his nature is.

Even if that's not him behind the mask, Peter Parker is certainly the kind of student who can have that effect on a teacher.


End file.
